Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is wrong about this moment. This moment is the beginning of an important conversation about sexual harassment. The “clear message” she asks for today is supposed to come after the conversation, when we have decided which distinctions matter and which behaviors warrant censure.
Senator Gillibrand’s talk of zero tolerance is a dangerous moral simplicity that waves away all distinctions. In this complex and fraught area of sexual behaviors it is especially inappropriate. We are hearing a lot of sloppy thinking from many quarters lumping together everything from a naughty glance to rape as all just not okay stuff.
The rationale Senator Gillibrand offers is that “we owe it to our sons and daughters to not equivocate, but to offer clarity. We should not have to be explaining the gradations.” I think the opposite: we owe it to our children to grapple honestly with this hardest and most vital part of life. They need to know it is not easy, and that they will meet people with widely differing feelings and attitudes. Recognizing these differences, and that they matter, is not equivocating.
We are in danger right now of making sexual purity into the new litmus test that drug use was a generation ago. Remember when would-be politicians had to make declarations like “but I didn’t breathe in”? If we go this direction, every man (or woman) considering a political career will have to weigh whether having once made an off-color joke in public – perhaps an overly exuberant wedding toast (“Trying to tell some brides about the wedding night is like giving a fish a bath!”) – will disqualify him from office.
“While it’s true that his behavior is not the same as the criminal conduct alleged against” some others, Senator Franken’s behavior “should not be tolerated,” says Senator Gillibrand. This indifference to gradations of behavior undercuts exactly the solution she is advocating. She advocates that “Every workplace in America, including Congress, needs to have a strong process and accountability for sexual harassment claims,” but in the very next sentence says it would be better to skip Senator Franken’s Ethics Committee review in order to “send a clear message.” The clearest message that would send is that these accountability processes are prissy formalities of no real value.
The implicit assumption throughout Senator Gillibrand’s Facebook statement is that we all know what’s right and wrong here, the issues here are black and white. But everyone knows they are not. Pushing people to pretend subtle issues are obvious just invites dishonesty. Senator Franken’s history offers exactly the sort of ambiguity that we should treat through a due process.
If sexuality is complex and subtle, humor is almost as much so. Senator Franken’s humor is a bit, ummm, broad, as anyone can tell just from the titles of his books. I first heard of him when my brother was reading his Rush Limbaugh Is a Big, Fat Idiot. His style is not for everyone. But that’s the point. It’s well known that a lot more men than women like the Three Stooges. Expecting one standard in humor or sex is asking for trouble.
The first report against him was for a photo of him touching, or approaching, the chest of a sleeping woman. How many reports of this incident remind us that she was wearing a flak vest and Kevlar helmet? A flak vest! The joke here was not about her breasts but about a man responding to bulky body armor as if it were lingerie. Accusing him of disrespecting her or her body is like accusing Randy Newman of disrespecting short people in his song “Short People.” The latest report accuses him of saying to a woman who rejected him, “It’s my right as an entertainer.” Even if that’s true, and he denies it, it seems obvious that he was spoofing exactly the sort of entertainer that Donald Trump in fact is.
This is a conversation we need to have. Drumming Al Franken out of the Senate without a proper Ethics Committee investigation sends exactly the opposite message: it says, “We don’t need no stinking conversation; we just need to get tough.” This is the wrong way to go.